SYDNEY — February 7, 2014 — In response to the panic over shark attacks, the government of Western Australia state last month began a cull of great white, tiger and bull sharks more than nine feet long.
Chris Boyd was surfing at a secluded break on Australia’s western coast when he was attacked by a great white shark in November. The shark severed his left arm and ripped off part of his right leg. The 35-year-old died in its jaws.
The Australian plumber’s gruesome death was part of an increase in shark attacks that has terrified swimmers and triggered a deeply emotional debate in a country where the ocean is considered the national playground.
“The public is demanding that sharks, where they stay around popular swimming or surfing areas, should be destroyed,” the governor, Colin Barnett, told journalists after Boyd’s death. “I’m in that camp.”
Environmentalists and animal-rights activists are outraged by the policy, and some scientists are concerned too.
“We are never going to stop shark attacks,” said Colin Simpfendorfer, who has studied sharks for 28 years and is director of the Center for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture at James Cook University in Townsville. “Science doesn’t support the cull.”
Read the full story at The Washington Post